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Adjacent to Sequoia National Park is King’s Canyon National Park. I spent the second day of the weekend there. Unfortunately, most of it is closed during the winter months even when there is very little snow. I don’t have much to show for it other than this one panorama. It’s actually stitched from 15 separate photographs and printed at full resolution would be over 50″ wide. Click on it for the small version.
King’s Canyon is the deepest canyon in the United States. The Grad Canyon is larger, but this one is deeper.
 This past weekend I drove up to Sequoia National Park to see the oldest and largest living things on Earth. Of course, I took lots of pictures, but I immediately ran in to the problem of scale. The difficulty with taking a photograph of something very large is that the impression is lost to the viewer without some sense of scale to the whole thing. The eye automatically assumes that the trunk of a tree is, maximum, about as wide as your outstretched arms. But if you look carefully at the image on the right, you’ll see a couple little dots at the bottom… Those are cars! Actually, the vehicle on the left is a minivan.
Walking around the giant sequoias (redwoods) is a humbling experience. Their immense size just makes you feel small, kind of like learning that the 100 billion stars in our mid-sized galaxy are insignificant because there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the known universe. Kind of like working at Google, too, for that matter.
 This tree here is “General Sherman“. It is the largest living thing on Earth. (The little figure in front is me.) Amazingly enough, it’s not that old at only 2,200 years or so. It lost it’s largest branch about a year ago, which in itself was larger that most large trees. A giant sequoia will add as much mass to its trunk in a single year as most trees will add in their entire lifetime. Interestingly, sequoias don’t seem to have a natural lifetime. They may simply live forever unless destroyed by an outside force. Their bark and wood contain tannin, which gives it the reddish color and acts as a natural perservative against insects. The sap is also quite watery making it resistant to fire. In fact, sequoias generally won’t burn without some sort of external fuel to keep the fire alive. They also heal themselves remarkably well, living for centuries even after being seriously burned (see photo of split-trunk tree in the middle, below — click for larger version).
  
This ends my first week at the GooglePlex (or, simply, “The Plex”). It’s not like Zurich, that’s for sure. There are some 4000 employees here, spread out in more buildings than I care to count. The atmosphere is a cross between a typical big company and a university campus, especially at meal time.
Google is well known for the food it provides to its employees. We get breakfast, lunch, and dinner at any one of nearly a dozen places, all for free. Each restaurant has it’s own theme. “Charlie’s” is the main cafeteria and on a typical afternoon you can get anything from pizza to burritos to curry to asian stir fry to fettucini to sandwhiches to hamburgers to salads to soups, etc., etc. The menu at the entrance always lists at least 15 to 20 different dishes that are seldom repeated, not counting those that are always present (like soup, salad, burritos, etc.). Of course there are also some freshly made cookies or small cakes, and a fridge full of drinks, and a freezer full of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (the little 1/2 serving cups that are just about right). Other places on campus specialize in natural “health” food or fruit smoothies or… or I don’t know because I’ve only managed to make it to four of them so far!
It seems most people work about the 10-6 shift. It’s easy to find parking at 8am, but don’t even try at 5pm. Many seem to grab dinner to-go and then head out. My hours have been longer, but then I have nothing here to go home to and many cool, interesting things to play with at work. Those hours will get cut back to normal once I’m with my family again, but for now I don’t mind.
Incidentally, if you want to see what the GooglePlex looks like, install Google Earth and go to…
1600 Amphitheatre Pky, Mountain View, Ca
Then check the “3D buildings” and zoom in. Google is currently building a huge solar array, which is already shown on the model. I’m in the south-east (lower-right) building, about the middle of the curve on the top-right.
Now, if you move your mouse to the top-right of the screen, you’ll see a horizontal slider bar. Click the icon on the right end and watch the map tilt so you can see the elevations better. The patio you see is just outside of Charlie’s.
The primary site for Google is situated in Mountain-View, California — Silicon Valley. It’s been overcast and rainy since I’ve arrived, but that’s okay since, believe it or not, that’s about the best possible weather for photography. Without huge, overhead, translucent diffusers (aka “clouds”) to ensure that everything has light, you’d get some very dark shadows.
After getting settled in by finding breakfast, groceries, and my bearings, I headed off down to Santa Cruz and from there up along Highway #1 that follows the coastline. There were a number of people at the beach I visited, so it seems at least the blood of some people down here isn’t too thin. Nobody was swimming, though. After a week at -20°C, this was t-shirt weather for me.
The apartment I’m staying in is quite nice, with three bedrooms. So far, I have only one roommate, a guy from the Japan office. There was someone in the other room when I arrived, but he was gone when I got up the next morning.
It’s a terrible thing how much we take for granted those that we love every day. There was a time, not too long ago, that I looked forward to being away on this new adventure. Though I knew at the time it would be difficult to leave my wife and my son for the duration, it also held some of the promise of the “good old single life”.
I’m sure I’m not alone when, inside a marriage, I look back at the days when I had no committments and could come and go as I pleased. In fact, I know I’m not alone because France and I have talked about it and she’s felt the same way from time to time. But like the life as a couple that you give up when you have children, neither of us have felt that the “good old single life” was so good as to be worth giving up the great life we have together.
Three weeks ago when I left for the airport to begin the first journey, I was excited and eager. This past week with my family was a joy and pretty much resumed exactly where it had left off. But something else seems to have come from it, come from the sudden contrasts between living alone and living with family. Leaving didn’t seem like the same adventure it was the first time. Kissing my wife goodbye this morning was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. I really didn’t want to go.
It’s going to be difficult, being away from them for the next four weeks. I’ll make the most of it, I guess. I’m paying the price, so I might as well get something for it. During that time, I’ll try to write about more interesting things… instead of my own self-pity.
My last week in Zurich has come to a close. I won’t be back again until May when I bring the rest of my family. It’s been busy with classes in most mornings and a self-learning schedule for the rest of the day (plus various talks and meetings). I surely haven’t been idle.
This week, I got to play with MapReduce, Google’s system for distributing tasks across many machines, and the distributed systems it runs on. Very impressive! These guys have the best toys!
I got out to do some more photography tonight, too. Since it’ll be the last time I’m in the city without my family, I might as well get done what exploring I can.
  
The best thing is that now I get to go home and spend some time with my wife and son. Yeah!
My first week of work for Google is now over and what a week it has been. It’s frustrating in a way because I’ve learned about so many cool and interesting (to geeks) things and yet I’m not supposed to talk about them. <sigh> C’est la vie!
So what can I say? It’s a great place to work! The people are all excellent and very friendly. We’re given top-notch equipment to work with. We’re fed very well — an average Googler puts on 15 pounds upon starting work here. Did you know that Googlers consume 500 lbs (227 kg) of cerial every day? The benefits range from the small to the large, but it’s all very thoughtful and very, very appreciated.
While I was interviewing, I was told, “Most people, when they have problems they are trying to solve, will go to Google and do a search. Somebody has had that problem before. At Google, though, we have problems that nobody has ever seen before.”
He was right! It’s humbling to work here. I feel very small, and that’s only after one week.
Pain! Oh, wait… That’s how I started yesterday. It’s not as bad today anyway.
Tired! I went to bed last night around 11pm but my body still hasn’t adjusted to local time and so decided it was time to wake up after a 3-hour late-afternoon nap. <sigh> I did eventually get back to sleep around 6am and sleep until about noon. I’m hoping things go better tonight or I’ll be one tired puppy during my first day at the new job.
 Because of my late start, I didn’t get to take the trains to the outskirts of the city. Instead, I used the remainder of my 24-hour tram pass to ride around the main part of the city and just look around, including a quick stop at the zoo. While waiting at on estop, I saw the “Fondue Tram”. I guess you make a reservation and then havea cheese fondue whie the tram drives around the city. Pretty cool!
Call home, buy some more groceries, finish my book, and watch a movie on my laptop. I miss my wife and my boy!
Pain! I’m not used to the amount of walking I did the first day/night I was in Zurich. My heels ached this morning and my shins shouted at me every time I took steps downhill. It eased up as soon as I got moving but I wisely bought a 24hr tram ticket for my trip back in the late afternoon and to cover my night excursion (tripod and all).
 I was a little late getting started (still somewhat jet-lagged) but got to the main station just in time to miss the tour I wanted. I bought a ticket for the 2pm one instead and went to get some lunch. I elected for the “Jules Verne Lounge” which is a 360° bar that allows you to see out over the entire city. I took photographs (there’s that surprise thing again) and maybe I’ll be able to stitch them in to a full 360° panorama of Zurich. I asked an older local couple to join me since there were no tables available when they arrived and I was alone at a table for three. They spoke English and French as well, so we had a good conversation.
Nice restaurants are expensive here and apparently a “bar with a view” gets the same pricing. I paid CHF13.50 for a small bowl of beef broth with three small potatoes! I should have gone for the chicken or pasta, but they were pushing CHF30! (CHF1.00 ~= CDN$0.95) We certainly won’t be eating out much when we’re here, but then we don’t eat out much now so that won’t be any real hardship.
The trolly tour was interesting. I followed on a map as we drove aronud to help fix in my mind the locations of sights I’d seen walking. The two rivers (one was originally a moat) flow north, out of the lake, and through the middle of the city which provides a nice reference if you happen to cross one.
Let me clarify a couple things…
Language: English is almost as prevelant as Swiss-German (it’s not German, as I have been politely corrected) in tourist areas, but that’s about all. Groceries are labled in Swiss-German, French, and (I believe) Italian. No English. Many locals, it seems, are bilingual or trilingual and even the ones who are not know a smattering of English words that allows you to find the toilet when in need.
Smoking: I’ve read that Switzerland has long been a smoker’s haven, but I didn’t see any notable difference in the number of smokers on the street than in Ottawa.  Of course, there is no smoking ban for indoor places here, so you have to put up with it in restaurants and bars, but the place I had lunch was pretty good. One thing I have noticed, though, is that those who smoke seem to make it part of their personal style. They have very personal and sometimes eccentric way about it. The picture is of the “smoking lounge” at the airport. Yes, that umbrella-shaped hoodfan is the only place you can smoke in the entire airport.
Tomorrow I think I’ll take a train out to a nearby city to see what things are like in the surrounding area. Who knows… I may end up living out there.
Standing up can be a bit painful after being in a chair for 8 hours. My knee was still somewhat twisted from the way I had been sleeping, but I was finally here in Zurich and ready to start a new adventure.
 My first thought while heading up the walkway from the plane was that this airport really didn’t look any different than the one in Toronto I’d departed from the previous evening. That didn’t really surprise me. As I got in to the terminal proper, my second thought was the same, and that did surprise me! I could read all the signs. English was always present if it wasn’t first. Verbal announcements are first in Swiss-German and then in English. I still need to pick up some of the local language for politeness sake, but it seems getting around may be easier than expected.
For all it’s bureaucracy and paperwork (or so I’m told — first hand experience will come soon, I’m sure), getting in to the country was remarkably easy. I showed my passport with visa to the customs officer and she waved me inside with only two questions of why I was here and how long I would be staying. There wasn’t even a check of my luggage. This fit with my experience arriving in London on my adventure to Africa so I didn’t worry about it much.
Getting in to Zurich proper was the next task. Since this is an adventure and I would soon be living here, I decided to do things the hard way. (Please don’t choke on something in your surprise at me doing something the hard way.) Since Zurich is supposed to have one of the best, if not the best, transit systems in the world, I figured I’d take the train.
I knew I needed to get to Hauptbahnhof, the main train station but simply couldn’t find it on any map. A quick talk with some helpful police officers and I find out that everyone calls it “HB”, including maps. Five minutes later I’m sitting on the train and fifteen minutes after that, the train departed right on time.
Zurich may have a great transit system, but they seem to assume that everyone already knows how to use it. I gave up trying to find a route map somewhere and went to the tourism office to ask. With a brief explanation, I was able to get on a tram (street-car) to my little apartment.
For two weeks, Google is putting me up in this “flat”. It’s basically one room with a small kitchenette and a balcony shared with two other rooms. There is also a small bathroom that includes shower. All told, it’s about the size of my master bedroom back in Ottawa. Notably missing is a telephone and ethernet jack. There appears to be wireless access but, alas, my ThinkPad is too old to have that. I’m hoping to be able to plug an ethernet cable in to the access point out in the hallway, but if not then this post will be a few days behind. (I wasn’t.)
Since I couldn’t call my contact here in Zurich to let them know I had arrived safely, I decided to walk over to the office and tell them personally. Zurich isn’t that large of a place, but the streets run at funny angles and can make it difficult to keep track of which direction your travelling. After a few wrong turns, I found the office and stopped in to say “hello”. Apparently there are 40 new hires starting on Monday! Not all will stay at this office, but it’s going to be an interesting experience. It’s been years since I worked in a company with 40+ employees and come Monday there will be that many of us starting. Oh yes… A grand adventure!
Time to head back to my place, write this, and take a nap. Grocery shopping was next; my-oh-my, they weren’t kidding that things are expensive. It cast me about CHF40 (a little under CDN$40) for a few days’ breakfast and some shampoo! I’d guess this to be about double what I would have paid back in Ottawa.
I spent the night walking around the city with my camera, trying to learn my way around and get some good photos at the same time. Here are a couple quick samples, but watch my main landscape photography gallery for better versions after I have a chance to go through them in a few weeks.
  
My first impressions of Zurich are that it’s very clean, very safe, and very expensive. Whether it will be better or worse than life in Ottawa, I can’t yet say; I just know that it’s going to be different.
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